Sunday, November 20, 2011

Ranting Bill Maher and the Wisdom of a Nobel Laureate.

I never heard of the guy before which, of course, doesn't mean anything. Yesterday I read about him in the latest "Newsweek" issue - and I immediately thought: "Man, this Bill Maher is some cool dude". Fiftyish, 100% politically incorrect, smokes marijuana publicly, born to an Irish-Catholic father and a Jewish mother, a strong sense for social justice, very self-assured.

Dig this:

On Religion

"Plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting late to be able to indulge in having key decisions made by religious people. By irrationalists. By those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken."

On the Tea Party

"Now I want you teabaggers out there to understand one thing. While you idolize the Foundung Fathers and dress up like them and smell like them, I think it's pretty clear that the Founding Fathers would've hated your guts."

Since I had a long flight back home yesterday, I also bought the "TIME" magazine where I found another wise guy talking straight: Dr. Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who won a Nobel in economics. In an interview he was asked on why people don't make rational choices.

One of the questions:

"What about experts? Shouldn't we trust their instincts?"

Kahneman's answer: "There are domains in which expertise is not possible. Stock picking is a good example. And in long-term political strategic forecasting, it's been shown that experts are just not better than a dice-throwing monkey."

As long as we have people like Maher and Kahneman, not everything is lost....

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